marti- Thank you again for listing one of my posts in your review of the week. There were some great posts to read this week. I also want to thank you for taking the time each week to not just list the good posts but also sharing your expertise with all of us. 

Mati,

I can't thank you enough for your generosity. This sis going to be one of my most used bookmarks.  

These are a superb selection of posts. I didn't realize that I missed so many but I guess with 85000 members, it was bound to happen. Good Stuff and Thanks you for taking the time to highlight all these. I love what you have done with your background and it has such an" Advanced Marketing" look.

Katerina... what can I say, it's people like you who continually post in depth, quality content that makes this group as popular as it is. Thx so much!

Thanks so much for this wonderful resource!  Bookmarked this blog to come back and visit the other notables you mentioned!  Thanks again for such amazing info!

Susan... you're more than welcome. I'm glad this info seems to be helping a lot of people. Have a great weekend!

Thanks for the info, another great post with great info!

Take Care & Have a Great '08!

William... thx so much for that comment, I really do appreciate it. And you're right, with over 85000 members it's getting a little hard to keep track of everything. Nite...

James... I'm glad you're enjoying these, have a great weekend and thx for stopping by!

Sylvie... thx so much for your feedback, have a great weekend!

Marti.....you rock!  Thank you so much for your generosity and help this week.   ;)

Pam... ditto, so many rockers here, it was my pleasure and... I love your new blog look, great choices you made!

Marti - your marketing week in review is one of my favorite resources.....it feels like you've already done the panning for gold for me........! :-) I have to say my eyes popped out when I saw my 25 Trends listed! ...Thank you..

So much amazing info you have on here Marti.  In fact, I just learned how to customize blogs and emailed Brad asking him about how to add text to the top of blogs and he told me how to do it and mentioned your name.  I then stumbled upon this blog of yours by accident! 

You are obviously very gifted when it comes to this stuff!  Thanks for all the links to the posts too! 

hi Marti,

Here I am up at 4 in the morning and raring to tackle marketing issues; so I'm happy to be reading your blog first thing as I start my day. Great info and I wouldn't have realized this about the background image unless I read it here...thanks!

As always, you've found an awesome array of posts to catch up on....

((-:

Jo 

Marti!  There is so much great information in this post, I just don't know where to begin!  Anyway, thank you very much for sharing this with us, I have not Pimped my blog yet, but soon.  Have a great day!

As a web designer, I get excited when peole start talking about screen resolutions. Does make me a geek? Grear colection of resources Marti!

Thanks for the mention my Canadian friend! Don't forget to post it to the group if you want the double wammy feature!

Finally!  It's starting to feel like I'm back on dial up with everyones fancy pages slowing things down....Now I hope everyone goes back and fixes their fancy new page....

Bob

More great info...you are a nice resource to have on here. Glad I am a subscriber...worth the fee!

marti - I believe in the get by giving philosophy and with all you give around here you are bound to be more than doubly blessed! Thanks for the mention in your post!

I never thought that screen resolution would have an effect on loading time. Now, I know!

Marti, I'm so glad you brought up the image size as I was wondering if all of the customizing is part of the reason AR has been so slow. I love your summary list and will make the time to read them.  Thanks for all that you do!

Great info Marti!!! I always try to think about the average consumer when placing stuff on my blog. It's the reason I don't have any widgets at all. I never really thought about the screen resolution though. Thanks for sharing this.

Really good review as well. Looks like I have quite a bit of reading to do .

Thanks Marti.

marti, yea mine is at the higher resolution, I can only see about 1/8 of your back screen. Perhaps this is why I heard on twitter that some of the pimped blogs load slow. I haven't found that to be true, but you never know.

Also great review !!  

Hi Marti - as always, a great review, and the info you add aa well makes your posts just a 'must bookmark' for me. 

Thank you for the explanation on the background images - I have mine set as a tile, but I must confess that was by accident and now I see it turned out that accident was a good thing.  And thank you for the info you added on the widgets and all that other stuff some people seem compelled to load their blogs with.  They take so darn l-o-n-g to load and some of them just don't seem to care.  When I click on a post or blog that takes too long to load, I just move on without reading what I went there for.

I have been wondering if one of the reasons AR is so slow lately is because of all the customization that many of us have done.  It would make sense if it was.  I know a lot of those widgets make some things very slow.

Thanks for a great post loaded with some very good info!
Ann

Liz... thx for the nice feedback and for the great post, I loved your 25 trends, you made me think!

Denise... thx, we're all still getting a handle on the new blog options. Brad Andersohn has a great video that explains it all.

Jo... 4 AM??? You got up around the same time I went to bed. Enjoy all the new goodies.

Lorinda... you're very welcome, our group has been busy as always.

Marti,

Great stuff. So is there an easy way for us to check the image size that we currently have? What about creating a new image? Can we control that size as well?

Jason... I know what you mean, geeks rule! Great post on reputation, thx!

Neal... loved your Localism post. Will add this to your WIR tomorrow, I really appreciate it!

Bob... no kidding, some of the pages I visited were taking forever to load, even on hi-speed, not fun.

Gary... cute comment, the price if definitely right. ;-)

I just recently changed to a stock "texture" image that tiles for the background.  I have a lot of high res images (adding more scans every day, too), but I save those for the header.  Here is another source of background tiles.  Absolute Background Textures Archive: 5846 Free Tiling Background Textures

If you want me to take down the link, let me know and I'll kill it.  

Marti - thanks for the mention, and also for sharing this post and all the great information in it!  You are such an awesome asset and contributor to this community!  Thanks for making AR such a great place to come and learn, grow, and build relationships.  Business always comes after we meet those criteria!  :-)

Linda... you're too kind and thanks for the excellent contribution to the group, your post makes so much sense.

Diane... personally I think the overload of widgets is more of a problem but some people are using huge background images which is also adding to the slow page loads. I thought I'd mention it this week for anyone who wasn't aware of it.

Bryant... there is a reason you're so popular here, you're a very sharp cookie. Re "I always try to think about the average consumer when placing stuff on my blog. It's the reason I don't have any widgets"...

  Less is usually more! Last week Katerina made a comment that approximately 30% of consumers still use dial-up connections.

 It's a minority but still a significant number so I also think it's better to keep our blogs & websites tasteful looking and fast loading. Thx for stopping by, really nice to see you!

Missy... hi, page load times also depend on the quality and speed of our internet connection. It might look fine to most of us but a lot of people here in the Rain have commented about slow pages so our site visitors will probably see the same thing.

 Again, I think widgets are more of a problem but I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. Have a great Sunday...

good morning marti- It's a beautiful Sunday morning for me, and as I sit with my morning coffee I logged on I saw you were Featured, already :)  I LOVE that you have explained this, and I think one step farther would be to show everyone the size, and how to resize.....I give this "speech" about 20 times a week minimum......even last night I was looking for a VISTA compatible Microsoft Poser Toy for my daughter....I have XP so pretty much everything works for me.

Anyway, great Posts, and yes Active Rain Rocks...nice  background.  And thanks for mentioning my As The Wind Changes Post.  I think that's one of the few Tuesday Truths that you wouldn't know what it was about unless you read it :)  You have a good day......I'm heading to the beach to go fishing :)

Ann... thx for the nice feedback and I feel the same way as you. If a page takes forever to load or if the widgets freeze up my browser, I move on. I don't have time to waste on stuff like that.

Herb... great question, I'll probably give a more detailed explanation about creating and saving optimized images for the web in an upcoming post. For now...

 Just right click your mouse on the image you want to check, select "Save Picture As..." and save it to a folder on your hard drive, when you list the files in that folder it will show you the size in both pixels and bytes. I'll try to do an illustrated example for you soon.

Thanks for the information. I am trying to learn all I can.

Lane... thx for the texture resource, no problem with the link at all, I appreciate it.

Brad... as always I appreciate your amazing tutorials (love the video series) & contributions to the marketing group, we're all learning so much. Also thx for the great feedback. You know the feeling is totally mutual.

 Re "Business always comes after we meet those criteria"... no kidding. I have several new projects going on right now with some of the AR memebrs. One is soooooooo cool but I can't talk about it yet. News will be out soon. As the image tile says, AR Rocks!

Marti, I completely agree and have thought about the images size and resizing it.  I am sure the majority here didn't realize the larger image would slow things down.

I prefer a black background for Active Rain blogs - most of the graphics placed in the background don't showup anyways. A good header graphic says it all.

Great tutorial on image sizes and links to helpful resources!

Kathy... Sunday, beach & fishing... sounds perfect. Re "I think one step farther would be to show everyone the size, and how to resize"...

 Definitely, so many little things to know. My posts have become way too long so I'm breaking down stuff week by week, good suggestion on resizing, I should do one of those as well.

 As always, thx for the great contributions, your posts inspire me and make me think!

Carol... you're very welcome, enjoy all the new posts.

Ray... hi, you're right, it's such small things that can make a big difference. have a great Sunday.

Linda... when in doubt I find simple always works best. Thx for stopping by.

Marti, As always, great information and very easy to follow and understand.  I learned this when I was building our league page for pogo.  I quickly learned the more you add, the slower the page loads.  Lot of complaints when I added music.  Quickly took that out.  LOL

Great info.  Once again, I'm bookmarking your post.  Thanks for taking the time to write a great post.

Marti....   you are pimping what?  lol   Seriously, thanks for the tips...   you have brought a different dimension to AR with some of your technology. And thanks for the special mention. I hope we get more entries for the newbie contest.

Mart- Great looking background as always with your awesome graphics!  What wonderful tips you are displaying with your post and thanks again for showcasing my blog, you are truly top notch and keep up the great work!

So that is why some people blogs have been loading slower. Thanks for letting us know.

Bob... pretty much everything we add can slow things down especially music, large graphics, widgets, etc... it's better to use the "less is more approach" and separate that stuff onto pages within a site or blog so people can see/hear them if they choose.

 Putting all the "goodies" on page 1 is not the best approach from either a web design or from a marketing point of view.

Grant... thx, I'm glad it's helpful.

Jeff... I hope a lot of newbies step up as well, you gave them a great chance to shine.

Justin... thx for another great post as well as the feedback on the graphics, much appreciated.

Ryan... yes, that plus the overuse of widgets. Another topic for another day. Thx for stopping by.

Great post Marti as usual. Thanks I appreciate your efforts as I know it is a lot of work reading all those posts. Thanks for mentioning Monika's post I know she appreciates it.

Jay... thx for the comment. I loved Monika's post, gawd could I relate to everything she wrote. have a great night!

Darn! This is an excellent blog chock full of information. Thanks a lot. 

Thank you Marti for the mention :)

Another excellent review Marti!  I have missed many of these posts so I thank you for pointing them out! 

Absolutely loving the posts... What a resource!  Thank you so much for all the information!

Alan... I really appreciate your comment, welcome to the marketing group, nice to "meet" you.

Monika... from one group moderator to another, you spoke for a lot of us, truly excellent post. Have an amazing week!

Debbie... thanks, this series seems to have hit a nerve with a lot of people, glad you're enjoying it, have a great week as well.

Ok nice blog, and I learned this a long time ago with a website I built. I built in in my resolution then saw it one day on another persons computer and it looked horrible. Good points. What does it take to get noticed on you top list. Are you reading my blog? Thanks for the links

Most people probably don't even know how to change their screen resolution. But our MLS requires us to keep our screens set at 1024x768 so I guess mine should be safe... I hope.

Ross... since this is the 2nd or 3rd time you've asked me "What does it take to get noticed on you top list."...

 Simple... post fresh, on topic, marketing related content.

 I read hundreds of posts each and every week and try to point out the most interesting, in-depth and relevant ideas for our group,

 Not everyone will agree with my choices and I'm fine with that.

 Since you asked "Are you reading my blog?"...  Actually one of your posts was listed in last week's marketing week in review 

 Getting featured in the marketing group is totally in your hands. Asking me again and again about being featured is probably not the best way to go about it.

 If you have an issue with how I select posts for the marketing week in review, feel free to contact the Active Rain management 

Lisa... good policy since 1024 X 768 is still pretty much the standard. Have a great week.

Great post with loads of information, Thanks

Laura... thanks, have a great week.

Thanks for the post. I use the 1024 X 768 as well. I don't usually change much on a computer....lol    

learning something new everyday - and I've just skimmed your post.  I've marked this to come back to and read throughly.  Thanks.

Marti, interesting. I'm going to have to visit the first 2 to get caught up.

Marti - THANK YOU!  I was considering a background for my blog ----but had noticed how long it takes to load some of the newly designed pages!  I DO NOT have dial up - I can't even imagine how long it takes for those poor folks.  Anyway, Now I can do some fancy stuff and won't worry about the loading time.

I hope others will take your advice!

Christy... same here, I try to stick with the standards. Thx for stopping by.

Tina... we're all learning, so many details to keep track of. Thx...

Duane... thx for stopping by, enjoy parts 1 & 2.

April... same here, on my hi-speed connection some pages were slow, when I checked thru dial-up it was really bad.

very interesting and usefull, thank you for the post

Edith... thx, glad it was helpful.

Marty,

It's taken me all night, but I've read every post.  There was a lot of "meat" to digest and I learned a lot of good stuff.  You do a great job with your week in review.  Thank you for all your hard work.